Prepare to live or prepare to die. Wanting results overnight, whether it’s losing a ton of weight, becoming the CEO of a company, being able to deadlift 500 lbs, or mastering the saxophone, is only setting yourself up for failure and disappointment. None of these things come overnight. Even the seemingly overnight success of Desiigner, whose hit song “Panda” is killing it, didn’t necessarily happen overnight. He had to create a lot of music that flopped or didn’t quite reach the masses before he came up with the hit “Panda.” There was a point in time where I used to want shit to happen instantly just because I thought about it. I wanted to be in the NFL but did not want to work towards it. I thought my potential was enough and someone would find me without even putting myself out there. I wanted to play the saxophone like John Coltrane and I wanted it to happen yesterday, but never wanted to practice. Through these failures and “dreams” being shattered I learned about preparation. I learned about the journey. All my coaches used to preach about the preparation and the journey, but I never understood what it meant. I thought showing up was enough. Now that I am wiser than I was at 21, I am able to reflect on what I could have learned from those players who were around me and went on to play at the next level. I now apply their lessons to my life and help spread the message.

One of the biggest traits that stood out to me was my teammates overall mental strength. They were undeniably focused on being the best football player they could possibly be. This meant intensely focused film study sessions after a rigorous practice, extra field work and drills after we were already worked to a pulp. They murdered the weight room like there was no tomorrow and attacked the recovery process like it was some fresh…. Myself on the other hand, studied when I was told to, lifted weights because I enjoyed it (but only the exercises I liked), and dipped the fuck out of the practice facility as fast as possible. I did nothing extra! I was doing work. The pros, they did all these things while balancing school and being tired as hell. I am sure they may not have enjoyed doing all of those things, but they knew what needed to be done in order to get to where they wanted to be.

Major key alerrrrt. If you want to be great at something, you must prepare. Preparation is a major key. It’s either you prepare to succeed or you prepare to fail. If you want to lose weight, what must you do? Prepare Mofos. There are a lot of obstacles that come with wanting to lose weight. If you don’t prepare to tackle those obstacles before you reach them, it just became substantially harder to reach your destination.

In order to prepare, you must first know what you want to accomplish. Once you have that out of the way, you must then learn what the proper steps are in order to reach that goal. Preparation is all about planning ahead and executing.

For example, let’s say you want to become Strong. Nice job, step one complete. Step two would be to come up with a plan on how to accomplish the goal. How many days a week you are going to strength train? Generally, at least 3 days per week is ideal, but remember, something is better than nothing. Once you have figured out how many days a week you are going to train, you then need to write the program. Once the program is created you then need to mark on your calendar a week in advance what days you are going to follow your program. Then, of course comes the last step, you must be consistent. When prepared, being consistent is much easier to do than when you have no plan. Get all the planning away at once. If you are anything like me, you hate having to constantly plan. Just being able to act is great.

Preparation is a must if you wish to learn the Power of Strength. In order to make the things you are good at your strengths, you must prepare. If you want to accomplish something you have never done, you must prepare. Sometimes we are lucky and that’s how we gain our success. Most of the time it’s not all luck and we need to be prepared in order to take advantage of opportunities that strike.